Gingrich knows that he needs to curb his tendency to lob verbal grenades, and turn his angry rhetoric about “dismantling the corrupt liberal welfare state” into responsible policy. But he has a hard time restraining himself. His disdain for the establishment impels his politics and extends to an active dislike and extends to an active dislike of the media. The day before the election, a staffer showed him a cartoon from The Atlanta Constitution caricaturing the hospital-room scene 14 years ago when he presented his wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery. Gingrich retaliated by refusing to give his hometown newspaper any interviews until he gets an apology. “It’s nuts to do that,” says an adviser. “But it’s pure Newt.”

So are rhetorical about-faces. On election night, Gingrich appealed for “a way for decent people to run for office without being so humiliated and so scarred up.” That seems a bit disingenuous from a man who, as chairman of GOPAC, a Republican fund-raising machine, sent out inspirational tapes to Republican candidates offering handy “contrast words” to use against opponents, including “decay, failure, shallow, traitors, pathetic, corrupt, incompetent, sick.” And just before the election, the House ethics committee questioned whether Gingrich had misused tax-deductible contributions to finance a college course that critics say discouraged “liberal ideas.” A Gingrich spokesman said, “We think these are bogus, politically motivated allegations.”

Gingrich is nothing if not enthusiastic. “I wake up every morning knowing there’s a cookie out there somewhere,” he told NEWSWEEK earlier this fall. As a history professor at West Georgia College, he rushed to work each morning, eager to share a book he had read or a theory he had discovered. “We called him Mr. Truth,” recalls Floyd Hoskins, Gingrich’s office mate.

Gingrich’s restless idealism is at war with a deeply cynical streak. On the night of his triumph, he spoke with outgoing GOP leader Bob Michael, who served 38 years in Congress without ever being in the majority. Recounting the conversation, Gingrich cried, stunned at Michel’s lack of bitterness. Such selflessness now seems almost quaint. It springs from an era of politics that Newt, as much as anyone, has undermined.

< b>SAYINGS OF A REVOLUTIONARY

LATELY HE’S BEEN SOUNDING like a conciliatory statesman, but for years Newt Gingrich has been known for his slash-and-burn ideological rhetoric:

One of the great problems in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.

Speech to college Republicans, June 24, 1978

Congressional Record, Oct. 27, 1988

Congressional Record, Aug. 2, 1984

Speech to U.S. Chamber of Commerce, May 18, 1989

On Clinton Democrats, October 1994